


there ain’t no eraser

by gingermaggie



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 01:45:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12223224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingermaggie/pseuds/gingermaggie
Summary: That’s the thing about drunk Clarke. She is very—aware. Her silly impulses increase exponentially with each consecutive shot, but she remains pretty internally coherent and in control of her decisions. Whatever she looks like on the outside, she’s always running cost-benefit analysis in her head. So—climbing on a chair: harmless, fun, kind of cute, a good story for Raven to tease her about tomorrow. Tracing Bellamy’s freckles? Dangerous. Very dangerous.Or: Clarke has emotions. Also, drinks.





	there ain’t no eraser

**Author's Note:**

> YO, I actually wrote a full fic within a few days for the first time ever??? yay me. it's about drinking. it's fun. pls enjoy.
> 
> \--
> 
> title from write on me by fifth harmony

It’s at this precise moment that Clarke realizes she’s maybe, possibly, kind of pretty drunk:

She’s shoving halfheartedly at Bellamy, sloppy, good-natured scowl on her face, scooting a chair out from a nearby table so she can climb up on it and tower over him. She tilts, or just her brain does, or the whole world does. One of those for sure. Fuck. She’s a little further gone than she thought.

“Careful, princess,” Bellamy says, grin spread wide across his face. His dumb face. His dumb, freckled face. Freckles. He leans closer to her, like he’s ready to catch her.

Clarke laughs. “Shut up, Blake, I’m taller than you now. I win,” she says, her hands landing on top of his head, tangling in his soft curls and tugging a little. He winces, but doesn’t move to pull away.

“Okay, _Griffin_ ,” he teases.

She sticks her tongue out at him.

“Hey, blondie, off the furniture!” the bartender calls, and Clarke sticks her tongue out in the general direction of the bar.

She thinks.

“I think that means you,” Bellamy says, and then there’s the sudden heat of his hands on her waist, pulling her down from the chair so she’s looking up at him again.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi.”

She wants to touch his freckles, but she doesn’t. That’s the thing about drunk Clarke. She is very—aware. Her silly impulses increase exponentially with each consecutive shot, but she remains pretty internally coherent and in control of her decisions. Whatever she looks like on the outside, she’s always running cost-benefit analysis in her head. So—climbing on a chair: harmless, fun, kind of cute, a good story for Raven to tease her about tomorrow. Tracing Bellamy’s freckles? Dangerous. Very dangerous.

In the interest of discouraging any awkwardness between them, Clarke makes the super mature decision to flick Bellamy in the neck and dart away from him to sit with Raven and Wells.

“Ow!” he calls after her, laughing.

Damn, he has the best laugh. And smile. And—shit. Nope.

Look, Clarke is only human, you know? And, like, humans who are even slightly attracted to men and who look at Bellamy Blake just—they don’t stand a fucking _chance_ , not when he looks like _that_ all the time. And _of course_ he has to be more than just impossibly attractive, _of course_ he has to be smart, and hardworking, and funny, and loyal, and a huge nerd, and a devoted brother, and a wonderful friend, and a huge grumpy sarcastic asshole with arm muscles for days.

Clarke has not handled the realization of her crush on Bellamy super well.

She settles in next to Raven, who is four shots in and immediately throws her arms around Clarke, yelling way too close to her ear about how much she loves her and how great she is.

“Thanks, Rae. Does that mean you’re finally leaving the old ball and chain for me?” she asks, stage whispering as she gestures indiscreetly towards Wells, who rolls his eyes with a smile.

Raven grins, smacking a kiss onto the top of her head. “C’mon, Clarke, you know I’m still holding out hope for a polyamorous love connection.”

Clarke and Wells both grimace reflexively at the thought, and Wells makes an exaggerated show of taking a huge swig of his drink to drown out the image.

“Rude!” Clarke exclaims, and Wells gives her the finger, which is somehow still a jarring look on him. Clarke retaliates with her favorite drunk move, sticking her tongue out at him.

He just grins with a pointed look behind her, and suddenly Bellamy is there, tossing an arm around her.

She glares at Wells, hating that he knows her so well. It’s easier when she can pretend that none of their friends know about her pathetic infatuation with her mortal-enemy-turned-group-project-partner-turned-best-friend. But Wells has been her best friend since she was three, and she and Raven basically share a brain, and Jasper never met a potential real-life couple he didn’t ship, and Monty never met a ship of Jasper’s he didn’t want to start a betting pool about, and Miller never met a betting pool of Monty’s he didn’t want to take part in.

So really, it seems like the only one who doesn’t know is Bellamy. Except maybe Octavia. She really hopes Octavia doesn’t know.

“Clarke, do you wanna come play Up Jenkins? Monty’s trying to get a group together,” Bellamy says.

Raven pinches her side, which Clarke assumes is shorthand for her current favorite refrain, _just jump him already_. Clarke pinches her back, and Raven grins.

“Yeah, sure,” she says, turning around too fast and watching the world spin for a second.

“Lush,” Bellamy says, fond.

And really, that’s all she needs. Bellamy, by her side, teasing her, or across the table from her, trying to read her poker face, or walking her back to her apartment after a late night.

She doesn’t need a relationship with him. She doesn’t. She’s incredibly happy being his friend.

Just. She wouldn’t mind being a little more.

 

\- - -

 

Clarke is on a mission to get water, consume half a family sized bag of Goldfish, wash her face, and pass out when there’s a knock on her door. She groans under her breath, giving serious thought to just ignoring it.

“Griffin, I see your light, I know you’re awake! It’s just me,” Miller calls out from the hall. “Or, I guess maybe you left your light on and passed out, but if that’s the case I have no regrets about waking you up because you should turn that off, it’s wasteful.”

Clarke tries to keep a grin off her face as she makes her way over to let him in. “What?” she says, a little whiny, and Miller smirks.

“Good night?” he asks, and she tries to glare at him.

“ _You know_ it was a terrible wedding and a terrible reception for a terrible person whom I _hate_ , and you _suck_ for not coming, you and Wells both, I thought we were in the Cage Wallace shitshow together, what else is the _point_ of a Three Musketeers Pact,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Sounds like he had plenty of alcohol there, though,” Miller offers.

Clarke wrinkles her nose. “Not enough to make up for the betrayal of being left alone at a rich person function with _my mother_ and _Cage Wallace_ and _no backup_.”

Miller is unrepentant. “There is an answer to an RSVP card that’s not yes,” he shrugs. “Not my fault Jaha and I found it and you didn’t.”

“You suck.”

“That’s fair. Anyway, are you at all interested in the actual reason I’m here, since I give negative shits about Cage Wallace’s wedding?”

She’s still pouting a little, but she gestures for him to speak. Miller doesn’t come over to her and Raven’s apartment that often. They all live in campus housing, Monty and Jasper in the unit right upstairs, and Bellamy and Miller, both RAs, in single apartments across the hall and in the building next door respectively. Most group activities take place at Monty and Jasper’s, and if Miller ever is in their hall, it’s usually to go see Bellamy.

“Blake sent me over here to find you, we just got back from Monty’s and he’s drunk. I’m gonna hang out for a little bit and make sure he doesn’t die, you want to come?”

Clarke’s already grabbing her keys and slippers and following him out into the hall. An instant later they’re in Bellamy’s apartment, and Bellamy himself is just inside the doorway, leaning against the wall, looking remarkably smashed.

“You abandoned me, you bastard,” he tells Miller, who just flips him off and flops into an armchair. He turns to his other visitor. “Clarke!” he says. “Clarke’s here! You got her!”

Miller mumbles something under his breath that Clarke doesn’t catch, but she’s too busy laughing at Bellamy to care. She feels lit up with delight. “You’re drunker than me!” she exclaims. “You’re never drunker than me!”

He slings an arm around her and tucks his neck against the top of her head, too much weight against her. She stumbles them towards the couch and he sprawls across her lap. She tucks her fingers into his hair, smoothing, soothing.

“We were—” his voice slurs a bit. “We were playin’ kingsss.” He drags the _s_ out, hissing. Clarke smiles at the sound, hearing her dad’s voice in the back of her mind, laughing, joking, _what, are you losing air?_

“Ah, kings,” Clarke says, supportive.

“Miller, mph. Miller’s an asshole”—ash hole—“Clarke, he’s the _worst_. He made the rule I have to drink with everybody”—ev buddy—“every drink. Then they all messed up on purpose so I’d drink more.”

Clarke jumps when Miller pipes up from his chair. She’d sort of forgotten he was here. “We called the rule Mom Friend Bellamy. It was awesome. We renewed it for all four kings.”

“Nothing more fun than peer pressuring friends into alcohol poisoning,” Clarke agrees, and Bellamy snorts, eyes still closed.

Clarke gets to work procuring waters for the three of them and bullying Bellamy and Miller into drinking theirs. She puts some Netflix documentary on and settles onto the floor in front of the couch, but Miller boos her selection until she relents and puts on _The Office_ instead, so she makes them drink water every time Michael does something cringeworthy. After that, it’s not long until Clarke deems them appropriately hydrated.

When Miller finally leaves, heading out with a cheery enough salute and a steady enough step that Clarke isn’t worried about the short walk back to his own apartment, she settles in next to Bellamy on the couch, turning off the TV that no one is watching anymore.

She should probably go home soon. See if Raven made it back alive. Get some sleep.

Instead she studies Bellamy, half asleep next to her. His hair is a complete wild mess, his shirt sporting some kind of stain across the shoulder. He kicked off his shoes at some point without her noticing. His hands—Clarke squints, confused. She hadn’t really noticed before, but his hands are covered in ink, fragments and squiggles of lines that she thinks must have had some sort of meaning when they were still in his head. It’s not totally unusual for him to write notes on his skin—“There’s no reason to waste paper for this, Clarke. Human skin is useful and reusable.” “Do you hear yourself when you speak? Do you hear how you sound like a robot changeling?”—usually a few words or phrases. Stuff like _call O_ , or _eggs???_ , or _meet Kane 10am_ , or _ch2 q 3-7_ , or _fuck andrew jackson tho_.

But now is different. There’s so much written, in Bellamy’s shitty sloppy drunk handwriting. Clarke inspects the writing, looking for something to latch onto. She sees one word that might have been hair, or maybe lair. Something about something being fried. Smudged ink, smudged ink, smudged ink. And then, on the inside of his left wrist, written in clear, block print, like he’d put a lot of effort into writing well: CLARKE.

Clarke laughs, just a little, soft, because—well, she isn’t on Bellamy’s level, but she _is_ tipsy, and she doesn’t understand what’s happening on Bellamy’s arms, but something in the instinctive tightening of her chest makes her feel certain it’s important.

“Bell,” she says, but his eyes are closed, and he doesn’t answer.

“ _Bell_.” She pokes his stomach.

“Hmph,” he grumbles..

“What’s all this on your hands?” She slides her fingers across the ink and he sighs.

“Did you know,” he says. “Did you—so, Emperor Augustus. You know Emperor Augustus?”

Clarke bites her lip, trying not to laugh. “I think he’s come up in conversation before.”

Bellamy nods, sitting up a little. “Yeah. So.” He leans against the back of the couch so he can gesticulate, not quite as wildly as he might if he weren’t so sleepy-looking. “So Augustus,” he says.

“Emperor Augustus,” Clarke agrees.

He doesn’t seem to pick up on the hint of teasing. “Yeah. So when he would go to have important conversations with his wife, he would write down the stuff he wanted to say so he wouldn’t mess up. Because—because he didn’t want to mess it up. You know? Seemed like an okay plan after seven shots.”

Clarke suddenly wishes she’d had a lot less to drink. It’s—there’s no way this is going where she thinks it might be going. She’s pretty clear in her head when she’s been drinking, but she isn’t perfect. And Bellamy certainly isn’t fully in his head right now. Just because he’s trying to emulate Augustus’s half-scripted conversations with his wife with CLARKE written on his wrist doesn’t mean—fuck, what else could it mean?

She tries to diffuse the feeling in her stomach, can’t resist a quip. “But you didn’t write it on paper, because human skin is useful.”

It works, he laughs, a little. “Ughhhh,” he says, head flopping back, eyes closing again. “Don’t judge me just because I make full use of my organic casing and you don’t.”

Clarke takes a deep breath, scoots closer to him. “Bellamy,” she says.

His eyes flicker back to her. “Yeah?”

“What was it you wanted to try to talk to me about?”

He looks at his hands, like there’s any chance what’s left there is going to help him now. “Oh,” he says, apparently only now noticing the complete incoherence he’s left himself. “Well.”

“Yeah,” she says.

She tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, feeling awkward. “It’s—you don’t have to tell me anything. You’re drunk, and I—”

“Clarke.” He catches her hand and holds it. “I’m really, really, _really_ fucking drunk.”

Clarke smiles. “You are.”

“And you’re drunk.”

“Mmhm.”

Each word is a sloppy attempt at speaking in a way that is measured and articulate, like he’s trying really hard to form and express coherent, rational, mature thoughts. “I think—that the conversation—I intended to have—is not suited for drunk.”

He looks closely at her, like he’s trying to gauge her reaction. She just looks back.

“It’s not suited—for drunk, so we should—later.”

She nods, looks down, trying not to let her heart sink with her gaze. He’s right, she just—she needs to know what he was going to say. She needs to know that a miracle was possible and that he could like her even a fraction of the amount that she likes him.

“Clarke,” he says, and she looks back to him, reluctant. “We need to talk tomorrow—like, after so much water and aspirin, but—”

And before she can blink, he’s kissing her.

It’s quick, a little bumbling, not much of a kiss. His lips are there and then they’re gone, leaving her swaying towards him as he pulls back.

It’s the best kiss of her life.

“Is that gonna happen again tomorrow?” she asks, voice soft. Scared.

He grins. Stupid, adorable, wide, freckled grin. “I really hope so.”

 

\- - -

 

“You are such a dick,” Bellamy says.

“What? C’mon! I’m just trying to be prepared!” Clarke protests. “I need to make sure I have all my talking points ready. I don’t want to forget any of my arguments or evidence, I want to make sure—”

They were definitely supposed to have a conversation before this happened, but suddenly Bellamy’s hands are on her face pulling her closer and they’re kissing again, better this time, sweeter, longer, somehow even more perfect.

“I love you,” he says, and she knew that by now, but the words still send a rush of butterflies through her stomach.

She smiles at him, hardly able to stand the joy building in her with each moment he spends looking at her like that. “Bellamy,” she says, soft. Letting the moment build. “I—can’t believe you made me drop my notecards all over the ground, now they’re all mixed up, good thing I numbered them—”

She bends over to collect them, ridiculous grin on her face, and Bellamy groans, throwing his hands up in the air. “Why do I even like you?” he asks.

Clarke grins, bright. “I don’t know, and now I’ll _never_ know, because _you_ didn’t bring notecards, so you’re _not_ going to be able to articulate your emotions, and we’re gonna break up because you’re _terrible_ at communication, and Emperor Augustus will be so disappointed in you, and then where will you be?”

“Dead in a ditch, probably.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, that seems right.” There’s a beat. She sets down the notecards. “Also, I love you too.”

He kisses the top of her head. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, that seems right.”

**Author's Note:**

> ok, so, nobody but me cares but i've never actually heard the song write on me, I just googled lyrics about writing on skin and I liked this part: "Write on my skin, bring me to life / Can't start again, there ain't no eraser" so I stole it sight unheard 
> 
> also stolen: possibly true information about emperor augustus from [this post](https://thebluestgansey.tumblr.com/post/144471472315/thoodleoo-you-may-think-that-youre-awkward)
> 
> oh, also ideas from [this post](http://ponyregrets.tumblr.com/post/139240388944/reblog-if-you-would-date-a-robot-im-not-a-robot) about robots and chash's entire robot existence
> 
> some of this was definitely my creation, I promise
> 
> come hang out [ on tumblr](http://thebluestgansey.tumblr.com), I'm thebluestgansey


End file.
